Sunday pork roast on a sweet potato, apple and root veggie bed

Warming comfort food happiness for grey Sundays

I was standing in the supermarket in the meat section last Saturday and started to wonder what ever happened to the good old Sunday roast. “Time to give it a go”, I figured, and took a nice piece of pork neck home with me. Pork roast is an Austrian classic, traditionally served with sauerkraut and bread dumplings and not usually placed in the “healthy” section of a menu. But since I need my beloved vegetables, I decided to go in a different direction and to serve the roast with sage, roast apples, (sweet) potatoes and a bunch of root vegetables. 

The beauty of these vegetable combination is that they will all develop a lovely sweetness when roasted in the oven. Sage and apple generally work well with pork and to round it all up I used some thyme and rosemary. Trust me, it’s a beautiful combination!

Another benefit of roasting some veggies with your pork is that you don’t have to worry about side dishes anymore. It also makes the recipe super easy, so you can relax and don’t have to worry much after you’ve put the dish into the oven –> perfect for having guests over.

Ok, so let’s get going! 🙂

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 kg neck of pork
300 g potatoes, washed, quartered
1 sweet potato, washed, roughly diced
300 g carrots, roughly diced
200 g cellery, roughly died
100 g parsnip, washed and sliced
2 onions, peeled, quartered
1 large apple, cored and cut into eights
a bunch of fresh sage, leaves picked, stalks discarded
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp ground caraway
olive oil extra vergine
a knob of butter
sea salt, pepper

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 200°C / 395°F.

2. Finely slice about half of the sage leaves. Then place in a bowl, add ground caraway, salt, pepper, olive oil and mix well. Rub the pork neck with the spice mix until completely covered.

3. In a pan, heat a lug of olive oil. Sear the pork neck quickly from all sides.

4. In the mean time, place all the vegetables in a large oven proof dish, season with rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, bay leaves and the remaining sage and mix well.  Poor over 3/4 l water. Put the pork neck on top sprinkle a know of butter over the vegetables and place in the oven.

5. Roast for about 75 minutes or until the juice runs clear when you poke it with a metal needle. Douse the pork with some of the sauce every 20 minutes so the meat will not dry out.

6. Once the meat is ready, remove from the oven and serve right away.

Enjoy! 🙂